How the 'Down' Macroeconomy Will Impact the Data Storage Sector

As vital as they are to the continuity of business, the data storage, archiving, disaster recovery, e-discovery, risk management and online storage businesses are certainly not immune from the impact of a negative macroeconomy. Despite this, it appears that storage could well remain one of the busier spaces in IT, despite a spending downturn.

And so the theorizing begins: How will the impending recession in
the overall U.S. economy be impacting the various sections of the IT
storage and data center businesses?

As vital as they are to the continuity of business, the data storage,
archiving, disaster recovery, e-discovery, risk management and online
storage businesses are certainly not immune from the impact of a
negative macroeconomy.

However, due to the nonstop job of storing ever-increasing piles of
digital files and providing timely access to them, it appears that
storage could well remain one of the busier spaces in IT, despite a
spending downturn.

Most people and organizations are not good editors of digital files. It's too easy to keep everything
and simply buy more storage as needed. After all, it takes time and
effort to weed out and dispose of files that are no longer relevant,
and time for second-tier jobs like that is hard to find.

Besides, in the case of business, new federal court rules and other state and national regulations require that a lot more business data be kept for legal reasons than in the past.

So on we go, stockpiling gigabytes, terabytes -- and eventually,
petabytes -- of personal and business documents, photos, videos, music,
e-mail and whatever.

Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz